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The Shining
Jack Torrance is an aspiring writer who is attempting to rebuild his marriage and career, both of which have been nearly ruined by two traits inherited from his late father: alcoholism and an explosive temper. During one occasion while drinking, Jack broke his son's arm. This incident shocked him into sobriety, but Jack's temper continued to plague him: he lost his teaching position at a Vermont prep school after assaulting a student who slashed his car's tires in a revenge act for cutting him from the debate team. Jack eagerly accepts a job as a winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, an isolated resort in the Colorado Rockies. Jack hopes that the seclusion will help him reconnect with his family and give him inspiration and the peace and quiet to help him write a new play. Jack, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son, Danny—who has telepathic abilities unknown to his parents—move into the Overlook. As the Torrances settle in at the Overlook, Danny sees frightening ghosts and visions. Although Danny is close to Jack, he does not tell either of his parents about his visions because he senses that the caretaking job is important to his father and the family's future. Wendy considers leaving Jack at the Overlook to finish the job on his own; Danny refuses, thinking his father will be happier if they stay. However, Danny soon realizes that his presence in the hotel makes the supernatural activity more powerful, turning echoes of past tragedies into dangerous threats. Apparitions take form, and the garden's topiary animals come to life. The Overlook has difficulty possessing Danny, so it begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work. Jack starts to develop cabin fever, and the sinister ghosts of the hotel gradually begin to overtake him, making him increasingly unstable. One day, after a fight with Wendy, Jack finds the hotel's bar fully stocked with alcohol despite being previously empty, and witnesses a party, where he meets the ghost of a bartender named Lloyd. As he gets drunk, the hotel urges Jack to kill his wife and son. He initially resists, but the increasing influence of the hotel proves too great. Wendy and Danny get the better of Jack, locking him into the walk-in pantry, but the ghost of Delbert Grady, a former caretaker who murdered his family and then committed suicide, releases him. Jack strikes Wendy with one of the hotel's roque mallets, breaking three ribs and one vertebra in her back. Wendy stabs Jack with a large butcher knife, then crawls away to the caretaker's suite and locks herself in the bathroom, with Jack in pursuit. Jack tries to break the door with the mallet, but she slashes his hand with a razor blade to slow him down. Meanwhile, Dick Hallorann, the Overlook's head chef and a telepath like Danny, receives a psychic distress call from him while working at a winter resort in Florida. Hallorann rushes back to the Overlook, only to be ambushed and badly injured by Jack. As Jack pursues Danny through the Overlook, he briefly gains control of himself just long enough to tell Danny to run away. The hotel takes control of Jack again, causing him to violently batter his own face and skull with the roque mallet so Danny can no longer recognize him, and Danny tells him that the unstable boiler in the basement is about to explode. Jack hurries down to relieve the pressure as Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann flee, but he is too late and the boiler explodes, destroying the Overlook. Fighting off a last attempt by the hotel to possess him, Hallorann guides Danny and Wendy to safety. In the epilogue, set during the summer after these events, Hallorann has taken a chef's job at a resort in Maine, and comforts Danny over the loss of his father. Category:Stephen King Category:Horror Category:Novel